The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a machine which will measure events that happen within a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. What no one seems to be able to measure, though, even to an accuracy of several weeks, is when it really opens for business. Is it the moment when the first protons are injected into its 27km ring? When they first travel all the way around? When they are first made to collide with each other, thus generating the exciting new subatomic particles that are the whole point of the exercise? Or is it the moment at which those collisions become stable enough for real scientific data to be collected?rnWell, popular opinion-or, rather, a tacit agreement between the authorities at cern, the European particle-physics laboratory whose baby the LHC is, and the journalists who report on these matters-decided on the second. Though individual bits of the machine have been under test for several weeks, a complete circuit gives everyone the excuse to declare victory and splash the lhc as the "machine that will unlock the mysteries of the Big Bang", in the hope that politicians and the public will take notice.
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